V&A Dundee: Design in Motion

Neil Cooper steps aboard V&A Dundee’s Travelling Gallery as it starts its journey across 78 venues around the UK.

This 17 week, 78 venue bus-bound pre-show to the forthcoming V&A Museum of Design Dundee's purpose-built waterfront takeover starts its journey at an appropriate location. The Caird Hall, which once doubled up as a Moscow theatre in John Schlesinger 's 1983 TV film of Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad, is on one side; Tony and Susie Morrow's statue of DC Thomson comic favourites Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx is on the other. Such monumental icons demonstrate exactly how the local could go global in a pre-digital age.

Back on the bus, meanwhile, five artists and two studios showcase wares drawn from fashion, textiles, jewellery, gaming and software in an understated array of state-of-art displays. 3D is all the rage throughout, most notably via Anarkik3D Ltd's duo of Ann Marie Shillito and Xiaoqing Cao, whose Cloud9 software makes for a touching display. Digital Design Studio's real-time 3D captures of five of Scotland's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, meanwhile, takes you behind the scenes, and does for digital design what the Caird Hall did for Russia.

Elsewhere, vintage and classical art is reinvigorated by new ways of working. Such is the case with Holly Fulton's intricately patterned flapper-like frocks, which look akin to a hi-tech House of Elliot, while ancient and modern are combined again in the light and shade of Digital Lace, Sara Robertson & Sarah Taylor's painstakingly enhanced textiles.

Game Designer Sophia George's filmed show-and-tell of her William Morris-inspired creation, Strawberry Thief, offers up a pastoral alternative to Grand Theft Auto while also laying bare the collaborative nature of the game-making process. Lynne MacLachlan utilises computer design and 3D printing to pop out a line of primary-coloured retro-futurist accessories. Geoffrey Mann offers up a more meditatively inclined study of a moth at rest and in motion as it orbits around a lit bulb in this bite-size trailer for the V&A's interactive fun palace to come.

V&A Museum of Design Dundee goes on the road with the Travelling Gallery in this major touring exhibition, bringing Scotland's design heritage and present-day design work to venues all over the country. A Design Scotland app for iOS and Android enables you to track the exhibition's progress. Featured designers include…